2026 marks 10 years since we hit Publish on our first post at Along for the Trip. The posts haven’t been too frequent over the past few years, but the family travel hasn’t let up. So we thought it was a good time to spruce things up around here and reflect back on what 10 years of family travel has looked like for us.
What’s new and what’s the same
From the outset, we’ve always wanted AftT to be about making family travel accessible, inspiring other families to travel and explore, and keeping things real. We want to answer one question.
What works and what doesn’t when traveling with kids?
Our original tagline was ‘Teach. Inspire. Take the Kids!’ That’s still true and is still part of our logo, but tf you look at the home page at the top, we’ve also added ‘Real. Family. Travel.’ to that. We want to show you what real family travel looks like with school breaks, extracurriculars, and real budgets. We’ve always tried to be authentic with our content, and that will continue.
Other major milestones in 2026
Besides crossing the 10-year milestone on the blog, 2026 saw a few other milestones worth mentioning. This is the 100th anniversary of Route 66, and it’s particularly fun for us since it goes right through our city. Did you know that Oklahoma boasts the longest continuous stretch of Route 66 anywhere along the route? Pretty cool, and the nostalgia this year has been fun.
Another big birthday this year is for the National Park Service. The NPS turned 110 years young in 2026. We couldn’t be more supportive of what these folks do to keep our parks in tip-top shape, so a big Happy Birthday to them and many more to come. Keep up the good work! When we started AftT, they were celebrating their centennial, which was pretty special, and we loved helping celebrate in our own little way here on the blog.
Finally, the United States celebrated its semiquincentennial, or 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, on July 4, 2026 (yes, we had to look that word up). There were some really great celebrations this year. We were in between trips on July 4th, but it was fun to see all the red, white, and blue this summer.
10 years of new adventures and some of our favorites
Since 2016, we’ve been incredibly lucky to visit several new countries, explore a bunch of national parks, and do it all with our kids. Carrick and Carrie even snuck in a few getaways without the kids that they really loved. We haven’t written all of these up yet (we’ll do better!), but here are some of our favorite places, tours, and experiences from the past 10 years.
National parks
America’s national parks have obviously been a huge focus for us and the blog ever since we picked up an Every Kid Outdoors pass for our then fourth grader. That pass had us scouring maps, flipping through park guides, and dreaming about hiking through some of the most scenic spots in the world. That passion never let up. The National Park Service has added a few new national parks and a handful of smaller park units since then, and we’re still on a mission to visit them all.
Heads Up
New since 2016: Gateway Arch, Indiana Dunes, White Sands, New River Gorge, and the very recent Chiricahua National Park, which was just signed into law on October 20, 2026.
As of this writing, we’ve visited 46 of the 64 national parks. That’s quite an accomplishment for a busy family with school-aged kids! Now that the kids are in college, we’re not letting up. Just this year we visited Redwood National and State Parks, Crater Lake, and Lassen Volcanic National Park, along with several other NPS sites.
It never gets old and we love visiting. The US has such a beautiful mix of destinations right here, and we’ve never met a park we didn’t love for one reason or another.
Favorite national park
International travel
National parks are great, but there are plenty of other places in the world worth seeing, and we’ve always tried to add a good mix of culture and new experiences outside the US to the list. So far that list includes Mexico, Canada, Japan, Peru, Iceland, the UK, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Greece. In 2027 we’re looking forward to returning to Japan and adding Switzerland. Carrick and Carrie even found time for getaways to French Polynesia and Antigua.
We’ve always said that travel is a great teacher, and we’re reminded of this on every trip we take. That’s why we plan the day trip, take the food tour, and walk through the museum. Seeing life through a different lens is a huge advantage, and mixing those perspectives with a knowledgeable guide, a local delicacy, or a national custom is a lot of fun for us. We hope it is for you too.
Do we sometimes overbook our day? Yes. Are we exhausted? Sure. Do we need a vacation from our vacation? Sometimes it feels like it! Even so, we’ve never regretted it. Life is short and the world is big. Proceed accordingly.
Food tours
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It’s a little tougher with younger kids, but now we find a food tour wherever we go. They’ve become one of our favorite things to do when traveling. They’re usually cheap (you can typically skip a meal), fun, and we always learn something new. You also find out where the best spots in town are, so you can go back for that bite you need an extra taste of. This has come in handy on more than one trip.
Favorite tour
It’s no surprise that our favorite tours include food lol.
Favorite bite
Road trips
We never say no to a good road trip, and sometimes packing a cooler and hitting the road is the way to do it. Maybe it’s because we live along the longest stretch of Route 66 in the country, but we think the journey is just as fun as the destination.
We’ve done road trips all over. From our house, we’ve driven all over Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, to St. Louis, and down to New Orleans. We’ve also flown to a destination to begin a road trip from there. Ireland, the Pacific Northwest, Iceland, and Ohio to name a few. It’s always a fun time, and when you have your own vehicle and a cooler at the ready, you’re able to drive and stop wherever, eat and explore in other neighborhoods, and get out of town to see what the region is really like. It’s nice not to be at the mercy of a Lyft driver, a tour schedule, or someone else’s agenda.
AftT Hot Tip
Hot take: The minivan, not the SUV, is the best vehicle to rent for your road trip. Don’t let your ego get the best of you! Those captain’s chairs and big sliding doors are legit.
A few summers back we drove from Boston up to Maine, and there’s so much to explore in the little towns and stops along the way. The lobster roll shacks on the way up to Acadia National Park can’t be missed, and Red’s Eats in Wiscasset was worth the 45-minute wait. Sure, you can get these on a food tour, but it’s nice to have the option to grab some blueberry ice cream for dessert and enjoy it next to a lighthouse, and finish up with a stop at the L.L. Bean flagship store on your way.
Embrace the road trip, and find the fun in the simple things when you’re traveling.
What’s new around here? A major AftT redesign for 2026
If you’ve been here before, welcome back! You might notice things look different. If you’re reading this for the first time, we’re glad you’re here!
We’ve rebuilt the site and tried to organize things around information families are looking for. Destinations, types of trips, national parks, theme parks, etc. Every state and country we’ve visited now has its own page that pulls together our posts, the local spots we’d send a family, the things worth doing (or skipping), and the tips you need to book ahead.
The national parks got the same treatment, with a National Parks with Kids page, a state-by-state directory of every NPS site (including the brand new Chiricahua National Park), and a slick new map that shows which parks we’ve made it to. It’s also a great visual to help locate the parks and to help you plan. There’s also a new page for the UNESCO World Heritage Sites if that’s something you enjoy exploring.
We think the new design is going to help you find things quicker while maximizing inspiration and information, which is really why we do this in the first place.
What’s next for AftT?
We definitely have a backlog of trips to write up, and that’s going to be a priority. It’s hard to inspire you guys if you don’t have any photos to look at after all. Stay tuned for our summer 2024 New England trip (Acadia, Boston’s Freedom Trail, and Salem) and this summer’s drive from Sacramento to Portland through Lassen, Redwood, and Crater Lake. Internationally, we’ve got Amsterdam, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Disneyland Paris from last summer as well. Then there’s a whole batch of smaller parks and NPS sites and so much more.
We currently have trips planned in 2027 to Japan and Switzerland. If you know us at all, we’ll try and squeeze in a few more NPS sites as well. We do have a new park this year in Arizona that we’ve never been to… Road trip, anyone?
Thanks for sticking with us for 10 years. Tell us in the comments which national park or country is your family’s favorite. We’re always looking for the next one.
Safe Travels,
Carrick, Carrie, Andrew, and Cadence
